apple juice

Maybe the RNC was just what Obama’s campaign needed…

There were a number of “are you kidding me?!?!?” moments during the republican convention. In particular for me was when Romney made a sanctimonious and sarcastic joke about the oceans rising. Just goes to show you exactly how some Republicans feel about the environment. (or at least, the people that Romney’s internal polling said would be most motivated by that statement)

Anyway, mocking a President for attempting to shepherd the country into a more environmentally-responsible future seems a little rich. Isn’t it a moral issue to treat the environment with respect?

Likewise, with health care. I’ve read a number of posts that basically make a moral case with regards to health care:

→ Bugged

“when we as a country have become so small and stingy and mean that we cheer the idea of ripping medical care away from fellow citizens, offering nothing in its place but sanctimony and self-rightenousness… What are we? We’re not a country. We’re not a community.”

(Via Marco.org.)

More people with health care is a good thing I wish people would stop acting like it is everything but.

The most recent Thomas Friedman op-ed is excellent:

The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

‘Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears,’ said Edward Goldberg, a global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College. ‘The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.’

(Via The New York Times.)

the juice-ette says that perhaps I over-reached a bit with my UnitedHealth — death panels comment.

Maybe so.

I do think it’s preposterous that a private company could theoretically hold in its hands an essential life-saving vaccine and then decide whether or not they were going to offer it to people that have their “health insurance”.

just another reason, in my mind, that health care is a right, not a privilege of the rich, and that decisions such as this should be in the hands of our “by the people, of the people and for the people” government, and NOT some private corporation.

“UnitedHealth Group announced Thursday afternoon that it’s going to cover the administration of H1N1 flu vaccines for all its members, regardless of whether their health plan covers immunizations.”

(Via MinnPost.)

Sounds like there was a death panel meeting at UnitedHealth to determine whether or not people they insure should be allowed to live.

“Dr. Will Nicholson, a family physician in Maplewood, wanted to see what kind of health-insurance experiences many of his patients go though to see him. So last month he elected to drop his employer-provided health-care plan and began an experiment to search for a private insurance plan on his own.”

(Via MinnPost.)

As he says in the video, the current options aren’t working, and we need better options.

“take the health care debate we’re presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and ‘listen to their constituents.’ An urge they should resist because their constituents don’t know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare,’ which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.”

(Via New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country.)

I’m not sure if this column is funny or sad…

The link I found to this article claimed that it was the single most important thing you could read about the health care debate.

“Good thing our leaders weren’t so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill — because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.”

I don’t think it’s too bold to say that. Read this article.

(Via In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition.)